Why did Guinness boycott of parade baffle Rupert Murdoch?

Surveying the morning headlines at his 57 million dollar penthouse in Manhattan the billionaire media mogul noticed something that he'd never seen before in his 83 years: Guinness, the makers of Ireland's most iconic stout, was pulling out of the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue.

That was like the elves deserting Santa's workshop. That was like Robin telling Batman to take a hike. That was a four alarm pearl clutcher of the highest order.

Sanity would have to be restored and who better to counsel the Irish on morality than the gruff thrice married owner of The Sun and The News Of The World?

Like most media moguls in need of an outrage fix Murdoch took his fury to the one platform that is reshaping human communication.

No not Fox News, Twitter. 'Where will this end?' he tweeted. 'Guinness pulls out of religious parade bullied by gay orgs who try to take it over. Hope all Irish boycott the stuff.'

According to Rupert the gay people being discriminated against are the real bullies here. Now that's what you call a word class level of spin.

It's also a bracing reminder he didn't get where he is today through a boring old devotion to the facts.

Many of his Twitter followers tittered at his description of the march on Fifth Avenue as a 'religious parade' claiming it proved he had never come closer then 50 blocks to it in all of his 83 years on earth.

They also greatly enjoyed his claim that gay groups had tried to to take the parade over (in fact they're still banned from marching with their banner).

The biggest jeers were reserved for his recommendation that the Irish stop drinking the black stuff. Unfortunately, the best comments are not printable.

Murdoch wasn't the only elderly conservative white man having a mobile meltdown yesterday. Catholic League blowhard and frequent Fox News contributor Bill Donohue also took to Twitter to express his anger over the black stuff's bailout.

Donohue even typed in capital letters to convey the true extent of his piqué.

'BOYCOTT GUINNESS, SAM ADAMS, HEINEKEN,' he instructed his surprisingly small four thousand or so followers.

You can understand the two great men's fury. How dare beer corporations treat gay people like human beings.

From now on we should only drink the hops and barley of certified bigots. So it looks like the oldest, richest and most conservative white men in America are still in no mood to concede to modernity.

Fox News, possibly at Murdoch's instruction, predictably erupted in eye-gouging defense of their Dear Leader and the chorus of Did You Evers and This Cannot Stands had grown deafening by nightfall.

But across town some other elderly white men (and they are all men) much closer to the true workings of the parade must feel the axis of the world and gravity of history pulling on their temples and pivoting under their feet for the first time.

I expect the dinosaurs had a similar moment when the fateful asteroid struck many moons ago.